118 points Muhammad523 1 hour ago 145 comments
sebmellen 1 hour ago | parent
captainbland 1 hour ago | parent
varispeed 1 hour ago | parent
oefrha 1 hour ago | parent
GET https://api.yoti.com/idverify/v1/supported-documents?includeNonLatin=true
Can’t spend $10 to set up a Claude workflow to sync relevant parts of that page to a first party doc page?embedding-shape 1 hour ago | parent
umuttalha0 1 hour ago | parent
msavara 1 hour ago | parent
varispeed 1 hour ago | parent
chrisjj 1 hour ago | parent
The health of Anthropic PR when everyone realises the product rots young brains.
nolok 1 hour ago | parent
Using kids data to train? No no. Talking to kids about certain matters (it's still fairly easy to make those model go into drugs or sex or suicide or whatever). No no.
edukite 1 hour ago | parent
ozlikethewizard 1 hour ago | parent
logicchains 1 hour ago | parent
techblueberry 1 hour ago | parent
IslandRebel 57 minutes ago | parent
The point being made is that these age gates are often easily defeated and is impossible to enforce at scale.
Moreover it allows companies to collect a huge amount of bio-metric data which is difficult for users to remove once it is collected. This data has can be and has been exposed.
matheusmoreira 1 hour ago | parent
throwaw12 1 hour ago | parent
Also, what's the reason banning minors? Is AI bad for mental health? If so, should companies also ban them to prevent burnout of their employees?
techblueberry 1 hour ago | parent
lol
If so, should companies also ban them to prevent burnout of their employees?
No, capitalism must be fed.
matheusmoreira 1 hour ago | parent
layer8 1 hour ago | parent
Mandatory warnings like for tobacco might be in order, however.
matheusmoreira 59 minutes ago | parent
layer8 53 minutes ago | parent
I agree that children should be able to use LLMs under parental supervision.
matheusmoreira 29 minutes ago | parent
Yes, but merely on principle. I think alcohol and tobacco should be straight up banned unconditionally. Society resists this, so they banned them for children instead and called it a day.
I don't accept these ineffectual political concessions. If a thing is bad for children, then it's in all likelihood just as bad for the adults as well. So go all the way and ban it for everybody, not just children. Do it right, don't come up with these half measures that dehumanize children as a side effect.
layer8 20 minutes ago | parent
I also disagree with the dehumanization argument. Yes, the concrete age limits are a bit arbitrary, and actual maturity depends on the individual and is a spectrum, but regulations necessarily have to come with some level of pigeonholing. The fact that you may have to show your ID when buying alcohol isn’t dehumanizing.
matheusmoreira 11 minutes ago | parent
I'm sure teenagers feel the same way.
eurothings 56 minutes ago | parent
lol that’ll work
sdiupIGPWEfh 49 minutes ago | parent
Hence, if mandatory workplace use of AI inflicts harm, then I could imagine things playing out similarly. The damage slowly accumulates, may or may not be noticed in time, becomes difficult to pin down on a past employer, and when you finally realize you need to sue for damages, both the employer responsible and the system are rigged to drag out the process until you're hopefully old and dead before you have a chance to win your case.
...oh.
Muhammad523 48 minutes ago | parent
Aransentin 1 hour ago | parent
diydsp 1 hour ago | parent
Abt protecting minors:
19 states still permit teachers to physically hit students. In most states, children as young as 14 or 15 can be legally married (typically girls to older men) with parental consent or a judge's approval.
Multiple states have "religious exemption" laws that shield parents from prosecution for withholding medical care from sick children based on religious beliefs, even in cases where children die. Some states have essentially no requirements for homeschool curriculum, testing, or welfare checks. The US incarcerates children at rates dramatically higher than comparable countries. The 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit cut child poverty roughly in half. It was allowed to expire in 2022, and child poverty immediately rebounded.
Millions of American children have inadequate or no healthcare. Medicaid coverage varies wildly by state. States that rejected Medicaid expansion have measurably worse child health outcomes. This is political choice, not necessity. An estimated 500,000+ American children still have elevated blood lead levels, primarily from lead paint in older housing and lead water pipes. Roughly 1.4 million American children experience homelessness in any given year. Almost no meaningful regulation of what can be advertised to minors online.
Firearms became the leading cause of death for American children in 2020. Car crashes are still one of the top three killers of children. schools. Children who live and go to school near freeways have measurably worse health outcomes across their lifetimes: asthma, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular problems in adulthood. Universal free school lunch demonstrably improves child health and academic outcomes. Most states don't have it.
...but official(+) LLM access restriction is our priority? Hahahaha tell me another one.
(+) offline models are as easy as installing ollama.
varun_ch 1 hour ago | parent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots#Suic...
dartharva 1 hour ago | parent
rollypoley 1 hour ago | parent
Schools are not equipped to have these discussions bottom-up; Anthropic would make a lot of money if it went top down in conjunction with State governments.
fn-mote 14 minutes ago | parent
AI companies have the same fear of underage users that tobacco companies of underage smokers.
> reasonable usage for school age children
Comical to believe that any of these companies care. They are out to MAKE MONEY. That’s the only believable motivation for what the do.
walrus01 48 minutes ago | parent
The irony is that the authoritarian control hasn't gone away in China either, if anything it's even more advanced, the GFW and censorship regime there doesn't show any sign of letting up any time soon. Just today in my BBC news feed:
ACCount37 44 minutes ago | parent
They're cool with open weight AIs being released. As long as those AIs only ever say good things about CCP, and don't mention certain concentration camps or brutally suppressed protests.
walrus01 41 minutes ago | parent
https://huggingface.co/datasets/mlabonne/harmful_behaviors
If we were living in a scenario where the open weight models were truly impossible to uncensor I would be significantly more skeptical of them. As a test I have an uncensored copy of qwen 3.8 27B Q8 here that will very happily discuss a myriad of negative things about the CCP.
ACCount37 37 minutes ago | parent
But that's a consequence of how the technology works - not a consequence of China not being authoritarian about AI. They're just authoritarian about AI in different ways.
Not like they dodged the "ID verification" bullshit either. They were way ahead of the western countries there. It's vile - seeing this sad excuse of "think of the children" abused to invade privacy and strip freedoms over and over and over and over again.
throw10920 14 minutes ago | parent
Is there a similar process for removing not refusals, but misinformation?
walrus01 11 minutes ago | parent
Like, as a crudely chosen random example, the model doesn't have any core set of knowledge that knows putting sriracha hot sauce on your jelly donut is not a palatable meal. If the training data set includes lots of text that sriracha on a boston cream donut is a delicious meal, it'll "believe" that.
Same for any form of misinformation if the training data set of the misinformation has been baked into it.
CrazyStat 30 minutes ago | parent
walrus01 28 minutes ago | parent
baggachipz 15 minutes ago | parent
herbst 14 minutes ago | parent
reaperducer 45 minutes ago | parent
I simply don't understand how you can ask that question unless you fall into one of these categories:
1. You live in a place with no access to any news source whatsoever. No newspapers. No television. No radio. No internet.
2. You're a child under the age of six.
3. You're an LLM.
Every day or two there is another story posted on HN about the harmful effects of AI on minors. The level of willful ignorance here makes be thing the answer is #3.fn-mote 12 minutes ago | parent
Which is dwarfed by the harmful effects of social media (engagement farming).
Frankly, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I think the articles you are talking about haven’t even been interesting enough to click on.
afavour 37 minutes ago | parent
I think there’s reasonable evidence that when used incorrectly, yes.
> If so, should companies also ban them to prevent burnout of their employees?
It’s not that AI the concept is harmful, it’s using it to diagnose/treat personal problems, mental issues etc. Using it to crunch some data or write some code for you isn’t really the same.
I also think there’s a meaningful difference using AI in education and in the workplace. When you get a writing assignment in a computing class the primary output isn’t the words, it’s you having learned about the topic and how to express yourself. And lots of students are using AI to skip that part entirely.
chrisjj 24 minutes ago | parent
Yes, if the last few delusional "papers" from Anthropic staff are anything to go by.
planb 1 hour ago | parent
frosty_lemon 31 minutes ago | parent
TutleCpt 1 hour ago | parent
Claudelmfao 1 hour ago | parent
Offbrand LLM - I don’t think they care
pr337h4m 1 hour ago | parent
logicchains 1 hour ago | parent
lirolero 1 hour ago | parent
onion2k 54 minutes ago | parent
jbs789 45 minutes ago | parent
de-moray 1 hour ago | parent
matheusmoreira 56 minutes ago | parent
When I was a teenager, there was nothing I hated more than obnoxious adults deciding for me what I could or couldn't do. I did literally everything in my power to circumvent them.
azan_ 51 minutes ago | parent
jbs789 46 minutes ago | parent
matheusmoreira 26 minutes ago | parent
embedding-shape 1 hour ago | parent
Claude Product Manager: No, that'll piss people off too much, and sadly we can't just ask for ID either...
Claude Executive: There must be some way we can force people to link their government IDs with our platform so our analytics get better and more accurate?
Claude Product Manager: We could limit the platform to 18+ and use "Age Verification" as the reason for people to hand over IDs, seems other platforms had success with this approach
Claude Executive: And we hardly have any users younger than 18 anyway, go for it!
wangxili1997 1 hour ago | parent
Laws like COPPA in the US, the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, and EU GDPR carry statutory penalties of over $50,000 per violation if minor data or chat sessions are mishandled without explicit parental consent.
For an enterprise and developer-focused company like Anthropic, minors contribute negligible revenue while representing 90% of the catastrophic regulatory risk. From a pure cost-benefit perspective, outsourcing age verification to an external vendor and shutting down the under-18 demographic is simply the cheapest way to wipe that liability off their books.
dkersten 42 minutes ago | parent
I know this isn't what you meant, but I can't help but laugh at the thought of a parent consenting: "I consent to the mishandling of my child's data"
As to your actual point, yes, I assume they are trying to reduce liability, especially if they're gearing up to an IPO.
lukan 34 minutes ago | parent
stingraycharles 13 minutes ago | parent
embedding-shape 5 minutes ago | parent
But for the life of me I'll never understand why people extend this very human idea to faceless for-profit companies that time and time make it evident only one thing matters to them, money. If it can make them more money, they'll do it that way.
cyanydeez 57 minutes ago | parent
This is about reducing liability and making everyone else responsible for their inability to manage their community.
embedding-shape 56 minutes ago | parent
You're hopelessly naive if you think this is all they get out of it.
azan_ 54 minutes ago | parent
password54321 54 minutes ago | parent
No, they know who you are. 1 in 3 already use AI for mental health advice among many other things.
abirch 35 minutes ago | parent
fn-mote 33 minutes ago | parent
Cthulhu_ 25 minutes ago | parent
nekusar 4 minutes ago | parent
The worst problem with mental health care is that there is no "you're better" metric. There is if your bone breaks and heal. There is for surgery of various things. But mental health seems to follow Parkinson's Law, and expands to the number of sessions available, whether it helps or not. And at X00$/session, yeah gets costly quick.
So if something trained on all psychiatric literature costs $20/month subscription, that's a substitute therapist. Whether it's clinically trained or not.
iamgopal 52 minutes ago | parent
Cthulhu_ 27 minutes ago | parent
chrisjj 21 minutes ago | parent
This person? There's your PII right there. The ad seller's dream.
paintbox 7 minutes ago | parent
tsukikage 17 minutes ago | parent
petcat 14 minutes ago | parent
The whole thing is pointless.
TZubiri 25 minutes ago | parent
That the impacts on adults are negligible compared on children is irrelevant, because they are multiplied by 0, since they don't apply to you, so you only consider the infitesimal effect it has on you as an adult.
For any parent with a child, it goes the other way, but with a slightly different mechanic. There is an effect on the adult, but it is so minor compared to the effect on children, that the proportionality causes you to dismiss the minor inconvenience it poses to adults, since you are focusing on the question of what happens to children.
Nothing wrong with being (very) selfish though, just pointing out the dynamic.
jscott0918 21 minutes ago | parent
Can you elaborate? I do have children, and I don't view it as any platforms job to police their Internet usage. I appreciate parental controls, but if they have Internet access it's my job to teach them to use services safely and keep an eye on their activities
vova_hn2 15 minutes ago | parent
I doubt that this statement is true.
hobofan 15 minutes ago | parent
Now, for the next "teen committed suicide after talking to AI therapist" headline, Claude can deflect the blame to the parents for not supervising their child enough.
nprateem 8 minutes ago | parent
LOL. Yeah kids have loved homework and writing essays since forever
jerpint 1 hour ago | parent
At some point you have to consider Anthropic liable if Claude is used for something nefarious and they didn’t even bother to know who was using their product to begin with.
embedding-shape 1 hour ago | parent
And if we still consider Anthropic should be liable for how users use Claude, even without nudging people in bad directions, should this then apply to more things in society as well?
mbrezu 1 hour ago | parent
scronkfinkle 1 hour ago | parent
walrus01 58 minutes ago | parent
scronkfinkle 55 minutes ago | parent
walrus01 53 minutes ago | parent
Meanwhile, the age flag in the operating system will be used for other forms of authoritarian control. It will have actually accomplished nothing other than limiting peoples' fundamental civil liberties.
scronkfinkle 38 minutes ago | parent
Leaving it all completely deregulated and/or letting platforms implement it themselves to varying levels of success and personal invasion feels like the worst option to me.
hgoel 48 minutes ago | parent
rokkamokka 58 minutes ago | parent
eagerpace 56 minutes ago | parent
nixpulvis 51 minutes ago | parent
I benefitted greatly from early access to computers and the full scale of their capabilities. It was a constant issue in my family limiting screen time, and who knows what the exact rules should be for everyone. For me it was a dynamic ruleset I was actively involved in the development of.
I could make compelling arguments to my Mom, that will not be the case with Meta, or Apple, or Anthropic.
Accepting "OS level" age validation is surrendering to a system meant to protect the industry, not our kids future. And while there are serious conversations we should be having about how to control technology use, it should be about parental controls and sane defaults, not age validations and legally restricted access by providers.
I hate how even the most progressive-minded people on most fronts are falling into this trap because big tech has failed them and they are angry at it all.
hgoel 35 minutes ago | parent
an0malous 50 minutes ago | parent
skybrian 39 minutes ago | parent
There should be a children’s Internet, just like there are children’s libraries, and child-locked devices should give access to it. Adults should be able to use the children’s Internet to see what’s there and children should be able to use the adult Internet when supervised by parents and teachers.
Technically, the only thing cooperating websites need is an http header indicating that the client is a child-locked device. Websites can disallow creating accounts or logging in from child-locked devices when they’re only appropriate for adults. There can be laws prohibiting advertising on the children’s Internet, etc, and legit websites will have to follow them. At no point does a website need to know a child’s age or anything else about them. Vendors selling devices are responsible for not selling unrestricted devices to children, but that’s easier than making every website do it.
Since the Internet is still a dangerous place, for non-cooperating websites, child-locked devices do still need the usual whitelists and/or blacklists.
woodrowbarlow 26 minutes ago | parent
pendenthistory 1 hour ago | parent
onion2k 56 minutes ago | parent
antirez 59 minutes ago | parent
YCHNPopcorn 4 minutes ago | parent
sdcfgy 59 minutes ago | parent
klausa 53 minutes ago | parent
drchaim 51 minutes ago | parent
AnslopicH8 50 minutes ago | parent
We get it. Anslopic the “me too” company has a “me too” LLM.
Do you have to ram this shit down our throats everyday!???
Fucking hell. Enough of god damn CLAUDE.
Stop the hourly Anslopic ads for fucks sake!!!!
Thanks
hnsucksnow2 49 minutes ago | parent
le-mark 49 minutes ago | parent
whazor 48 minutes ago | parent
duskdozer 36 minutes ago | parent
tantalor 46 minutes ago | parent
idiotsecant 45 minutes ago | parent
jbs789 43 minutes ago | parent
soltanov 43 minutes ago | parent
llm_nerd 32 minutes ago | parent
Tsarp 29 minutes ago | parent
jeroenhd 29 minutes ago | parent
thrownaway561 26 minutes ago | parent
b112 13 minutes ago | parent
dofm 7 minutes ago | parent
I reckon this will have been informed at least in part by a billing complaint somewhat like those "my kid bankrupted me playing games from the App Store" stories.